Systems
Systems '''and '''Subsystems play a key strategic element in FTL: Faster Than Light. Each ship contains Engines, Piloting, Oxygen, and Weapons as the most basic systems, as well as almost all having Doors, Shields, a Medbay and Sensors pre-installed, with a number of other, rarer systems available for installation, such as Cloaking, Drone Control and Teleporting. Each system occupies one room on the ship, with more important ones requiring 2x2 rooms instead of 1x2, and every system requires one reactor bar for each available stage of power. Below is a table of all systems and their basic properties: *=Note: Only through cheating is it possible to have a ship that starts without Weapon Control. There's two types of systems: Main systems and subsystems. The only difference is that subsystems don't require reactor power. They are automatically fully powered, unless damaged or crippled by the enemy or the environment. As seen in the above table, some systems have benefits from being manned. This means that the given system receives a bonus to its respective abilities whenever a crew member is stationary in the room. This bonus is increased when crew members rank up in the respective skills. Each system can only be upgraded to a limit. When it is fully upgraded, it will have the maximum power amount as specified in the above table. No ship will have all available systems installed when starting a new game. The ones that come closest are the Mantis Cruiser Layout B and Crystal Cruiser layout B, each with ten systems (maximum is eleven). To install a new system, it must be bought in the Store at the cost given in the above table. Main Systems Shields Powers your shields. Every shield bar can block one incoming shot. Upgrading increases bar count. Sustains up to 4''' damage-absorbing shields. * Upgrading will increase your bar count by '''1. ** 1''' layer of shield requires '''2 bars of reactor energy. * Manning increases shield recharge speed by 10% plus 10% for the first, and 9% for the second (depending on the crew member level of experience). Engines Powers the FTL drive and allows the ship to dodge. Upgrading improves dodge chance and the rate that your FTL drive charges. * Upgrading improves evasion, and the rate that your FTL drive charges * Manning increases evasion (5->7->10%, depending on the crew member level of experience). * Upgraded Engines are used in some events (Blue Options). ** Used to outrun attackers and evade combat. * Unless your helm is operational and either manned or upgraded, your evasion will remain at 0% regardless of engine upgrades. Weapon Control Powers all of the ship's weapons. Upgrading lets you power more weapons. * Click on a weapon to charge and fire. * Weapons can also be activated/charged by pressing the corresponding (1-4) key. ** If already activated/charging a second click or press will activate targeting. * Upgrading lets you power more weapons. * Manning reduces charge time (10%->15%->19% depending on the crew member level of experience). * Upgraded Weapons are used in some events (Blue Options). ** Gives the ability to scare some pirates before they attack (they give you some of their goods). Oxygen/Life Support Refills the oxygen in the ship. Upgrading increases the rate of refill. * Replenishes the ship's oxygen supply. ** The "O2 LOW!" warning appears when the total oxygen percentage on the ship drops below 25%. To take care of the problem: *** Repair the Oxygen/Life Support system *** Repair any hull breaches *** Close any open airlocks+ *** Make sure Oxygen/Life Support is powered up * Crew oxygen deprivation appears when the total oxygen percentage drops below 5% or when standing in pink rooms with hazard stripes (indicating dangerously low O2 levels). * Upgrading increases the rate of refill ** At level 3 your oxygen refill rate actually exceeds the loss from a breach, so if you suffer a breach open the surrounding doors and power up your support system. * Upgraded Oxygen/Life Support is used in some events (Blue Options). ** Helps prevent your crew from slowly suffocating during a slug sabotage event. Medbay Heals all crew-members within the Medbay room. Upgrading increases healing speed. * Heals crew members standing inside. ** Can only heal three standing crew members at a time (Excluding the Nisos, the DA-SR 12 and others which only have two sections for healing). You can heal any number of crew members if you order them to pass through the Med Bay, since they are healed while in the area of the room. * Upgrading increases healing speed. ** Upgrading the Medbay won't affect the Engi Med-bot Dispersal augmentation. ** Upgraded Medbay is used in some events (Blue Options). ** A fully upgraded Medbay is strong enough to heal crew members when there is no oxygen. Drone Control Powers all of the ship's drones. Drones are automated robots that perform tasks like attacking enemy ships or repairing systems. * Powers all of the ship's drones. * Drones are automated robots that each perform a different task. * Activating a drone is done in a similar way as activating weapons, by clicking on or pressing the key (5-7). ** Each activation will activate an inactive drone or consume a drone part if none are available. ** The drone will stay active until it is destroyed or its system is too damaged to power it. ** If at the end of combat you have any active and powered flying drones they will be recovered with the Drone Recovery Arm, causing you to regain Drone Parts equal to the amount of active Drones. Drones on board your ship stay with you until they are destroyed or you inactivate/sell the drone plan; the Drone Recovery Arm does not apply to them. * Upgrading lets you power more drones. * Drones that fly around a ship can be shot down by enemy fire if they are in direct line of fire. Your weapons cannot hit your own drones. Teleporter Allows you to send your crew-members to board enemy vessels. This system allows you to send crewmen to other ships to damage their systems and kill their crew. 20 seconds recharge time. Upgrade to reduce the time to 15 or even 10 seconds. Crewmen must be standing still in the teleporter room to be sent. Able to retract 4 crewmen if they are standing in a 2x2 room, although crew trying to break down doors will not be teleported. Unable to pull enemies onto your ship, however boarders aboard your ship from a previous fight can be pulled to an enemy ship. Works through normal shields. * Teleporters are used in some events (Blue Options). ** You can use teleporters to free prisoners aboard slaver vessels, this can give you a free crewmate. You can still gain a crew member as usual during a slaver fight. * A teleporter and an upgraded medbay is required to unlock the Mantis Cruiser. Note: While the teleporter works through shields, it does not work through Zoltan shields. However, even with Zoltan shields equipped on your own ship there are scripted events where enemies can board your ship, with the tag line "How they got past your Zoltan shields is a mystery!" Cloaking Cloaks the ship, adding 60 to your evasion and preventing the enemy ship from locking on with their weapons. Cloaking increases your ships evade by 60 points and prevents it from being targeted by enemy weapons or drones. *Enemy weapons don't charge while the cloak is active. *Enemies can't teleport onto or off of a cloaked ship. *Enemy boarding drones will drift while cloak is active and retarget when cloak finishes. Used in some events (Blue Options). Artillery Beam (Federation Cruiser only) Powers a slow, high-powered beam that pierces all shields and does one damage per room hit. More power means faster cooldown. * Automatically fires when powered. * Powering off resets charge. * Upgrading means faster charge rate. * NOTE: This will not however, pierce a Zoltan shield. It will deal damage to the shield equal to the number of rooms that would be hit (as all beam weapons). Subsystems These systems are always powered and don't take power from the reactor, but can be disabled and thus making them temporarily inactive until you repair them. Piloting Allows the ship to make FTL jumps and dodge when piloted. Upgrading adds auto-pilot that allows some evasion even without a pilot. The only system that initially requires manning to be of any use. * Manning: **Activates the FTL drive **Activates evasion, increased evasion depending on the crew member level of experience. *Upgrading adds auto-pilot, meaning your ship has a fraction of normal evasion when not manned. * Used in some events (Blue Options). Sensors Reveals the interior of your ship and gives information about enemy ships. * Reveals the interior of your ship * Upgrading reveals information about enemy ships, such as enemy crew and their power distribution. * Temporarily disabled when in nebula. * Used in some events (Blue Options). Doors Allows remote opening and closing of doors. Upgrades to Blast Doors that impede fire spread and intruder movement. Allows for the remote operation of the ships doors. * Although simple in theory, doors have many uses: ** Can be used to vent oxygen from rooms in order to suffocate a fire. ** Can be used to quickly supply oxygen from the rest of the ship to recently repaired areas. After a previously breached room is repaired, it can take the oxygen system 2-3 seconds of extremely vital time to bring the atmosphere back; but if you open the doors to fully pressurized adjacent rooms, the pressure will balance between them. ** When facing a superior boarding party (say you have mostly zoltan/engi, and 4 mantis board your ship!) you can vent the entire ship save the medbay/rooms beyond it. This will quickly force the boarders to assault your medbay, where your crew will be healed while fighting. Once the boarders are in the medbay you can safely close off/resupply the ship with oxygen as you medbay-tank them down. However, it may be a wise idea to make sure all the boarders are inside the medbay or dead before closing the doors. Most medbays can only take 3 enemies at once. If you happen to have a 4th stray boarder roaming your ship, closing the doors prematurely, before he actually dies from oxygen deprivation, may enable him to take down your oxygen system, which could put your crew in a very difficult situation if you don't have a System Repair Drone ready to go. * Upgrading impedes fire spread and intruder movement. * A destroyed door system prevents remote operation of doors, but still allow crew (and boarders) to enter and exit rooms. Powering and Upgrading To power a main system, left click on it in the system bar. To unpower it, right click. This can be done at any time. Subsystems are automatically powered. Each system can be upgraded to support more power. This is done in the "Upgrades" tab in the "Ship" menu, at the top of the screen. Powering a system additional levels will make it more powerful. Damaged and Destroyed Systems A system can take damage from weapons, offensive enemy drones, fires or boarders. Weapons and drones instantly damage systems when hit. For instance, if a weapon damages a system for 2 damage, it means that the system's max power is lowered by two until repaired. Further damage to the system lowers the maximum system power further until it is completely destroyed. When a system is being damaged from a fire or a boarder an icon will show above the system (also when the sensors are disabled) indicating that the corresponding room is under attack. If a system is under attack for a given amount of time it will receive 1 damage (this is shown in the corresponding power bars). This also means that a system won't take any damage if the attack is interrupted, e.g. the fire is put out, or the boarder is forced to attack one of your crew members instead of the system. When a system is completely destroyed (all power bars are fully damaged), the ship takes 1 hull damage if the finishing blow came from fire or boarders. If you destroy a system with weapons or in-space drones, no extra hull damage is dealt, and bombs cannot damage the hull directly even by destroying systems. Category:Systems